By Howard Sherman, Co-chair, Delaware County Green Team, Southeastern Pennsylvania Group
By any measure, the City of Chester, Pennsylvania, is a poster child for environmental injustice. Located on the Delaware River just 18 miles south of Philadelphia, Chester has borne all of the adverse impacts of post-industrial decline. What remains is a semi-depopulated city with a largely minority remaining population, a poverty rate of about 30%, vacated available land areas, and diminished political influence in Harrisburg. Not surprisingly, these deficits have made it a favorite location for heavily polluting industries also interested in taking advantage of lax state environmental regulations.
In the decade from 1986-1996, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection issued permits to locate no fewer than five waste disposal facilities of various types in Chester, adding to several heavily polluting industries already present. Chief among the waste facilities and currently the primary focus of residents’ concerns is a trash-to-steam incinerator, the Delaware Valley Resource Recovery Facility, currently owned by Reworld Corporation (formerly called Covanta). The largest such facility in the U.S., it can burn as much as 3,510 tons of trash per day, trucked in from communities in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and occasionally from places as distant as Oklahoma and Puerto Rico.
The health impacts of the Reworld incinerator and the other polluting facilities upon Chester residents have been tragic: Chester residents’ rates of multiple types of cancer, asthma, and respiratory diseases are substantially higher than for Delaware County overall. Residents are also subject to the noise and fumes from heavy diesel trucks bringing trash through city streets to the incinerator at all hours and the lingering smell of trash, burned and unburned.
In response, Chester residents organized to wage their own fight against Reworld and other heavy polluters. The activist group they formed in 1992, known as CRCQL (Chester Residents Concerned for Quality Living), has pressed their issue in the courts, in hearings and meetings, in the media, and on the streets. Other environmental groups across Delaware County, drawn to their cause, have joined in support.
The Sierra Club, though an early supporter, unfortunately dropped out and had been uninvolved with CRCQL for a number of years. The absence became increasingly unsatisfactory to members of the Sierra Club Delaware County Green Team, who had long been involved with CRCQL as private individuals. They requested and received permission from the Pennsylvania Chapter and the Southeastern Pennsylvania Group to become more formally involved in supporting CRCQL under the aegis of the Sierra Club.
Thus, on May 2, Sierra Club DelCo Green Team members joined Chester residents and other environmental groups on the 2026 CRCQL Environmental Justice March as representatives of the Sierra Club. They carried and wore the Sierra Club name and insignia. They joined 150 other marchers chanting,
“Reworld, we’re not afraid of you,
We’ve been here since ’92”
A few days later, the Southeastern Group’s Executive Committee unanimously voted to donate $500.00 to CRCQL in support of their activities. These steps, actualizing the Sierra Club’s commitment to environmental justice, are expected to be the first of many in support of CRCQL and Chester.
The Delaware County Green Team welcomes Sierra Club members and supporters from across Pennsylvania to join us at the 2027 march for environmental justice in Chester, happening next spring. Definitely a worthy cause.
This blog was included as part of the June 2026 Sylvanian newsletter. Please click here to check out more articles from this edition!